Republican Heros

From Woodsterman blog

I might have added Ike to this painting ... and Nixon had he not resigned ... since his resignation has given us the blood lust with which much of the current media is infected.

I know, I know ... he covered up the Watergate break-in ... small potatoes compared to what the Obama administration did to Trump. But we forget ... he DID get us out of Vietnam, a nearly impossible task (something like Mideast peace.)

Yes, he would have been impeached and likely convicted in the Senate ... but our media might still be sane ... and we might be less timid about going after Hillary and Barack & Co.

But, then again, he opened up to China ... which turned out to be a disaster ... mainly because of what Bill Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama did and didn’t do.


Afterthought: This picture’s artist forgot that Trump doesn’t drink alcohol.


STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

Headlines

Chicago mayor elect: Biden still has to answer for Anita Hill

North Korea launched ‘several unidentified short-range projectiles,’ South Korean military says

Envy of the world, Unemployment 49-year low, Wages hit $27.77/hour

Donald Trump: Spying on my campaign ‘bigger than Watergate’

Harris urges DOJ watchdog to probe whether Trump urged Barr to investigate ‘enemies’

Boeing 737 slides off runway into Florida river, 21 hurt

Historic floods hit Iowa ...

Afghan pilot training program ends after nearly half went AWOL inside U.S.

Graham to Mueller: Give testimony if you dispute Barr

Trump and Putin talked about Mueller report, Venezuela and North Korea during phone call

China putting Muslims in c’oncentration camps, U.S. says ...

U.S. record natural gas production spurs export talks with Europe

So True ...

Deep Throat vs. Deep Six

Bugged!

CNN reports that the Obama administration DID wiretap the Trump campaign ... in particular its FBI under Comey bugged Paul Manafort, Trump's former (fired) campaign manager for many months ... including his conversations with Trump! See: Powerline Blog for a short and sour comment on this bombshell.

It would seem to this observer that, if true, this must have been known to the Special Counsel Robert Mueller for many months and, independent of any possible Manafort culpability, this revelation displays a level of Obama administration corruption that is stupefying ... using the power of government to retain power. The depth of this corruption will be inversely proportional to whatever is turned up on Trump and Co. Thus, the vigor of Mueller's witch hunt. And if Mueller sweeps this particular malfeasance aside in his slow-motion coup of Trump, then he is compounding such insideous corruption. Mueller's buddy or no buddy, Comey's actions throughout epitomize the systemic slime that oozes out when our spooks start playing politics.

Far, far worse than Watergate ...

Slow-motion Coup

We've seen this movie before. President Richard Nixon was hounded from office by a cabal of the American media, the Democrat party and millions of naive Republicans (myself included). It took roughly two years but in the end the pressure of the elite classes finally flipped the Republican political leadership to abandon Nixon over his obvious attempt to cover up for a petty Watergate break-in ... meant to do nothing more than stop the Deep State leaks inside his administration, (Remember the "plumbers" was the name of those who broke into the DNC to find the source of these leaks.)

Now, taking a lesson from this successful slow-motion coup, a similar group is attempting these same tactics to negate the 2016 vote of the American people in electing Donald Trump president. The logic behind this coup is that the drip, drip, drip of unsavory revelations about Trump and Company will eventually turn even the most ardent of his supporters against him ... and he will be driven from office. Clearly the Special Counsel Mueller has the backing of much of the media and the Democrat party (read a vindictive Hillary Clinton) in this overthrow attempt. There is one small difference this time however ... so far defining Trump's crime is dicey at best. Throw in that Trump is doing, to the best of his ability, what the voters sent him to Washington to do.

Also, as I first stated, we have seen this movie before. The script and the players are familiar to anyone who lived through Watergate ... except possibly for Bob Woodward. From recent interviews, I get the distinct impression that he has reflected on what part he played in Nixon's ouster and is less likely to take up the assassination pen this time around.

In many ways this (and Nixon's) cabal reminds me of that great novel "The Caine Mutiny" which I read many years ago. Here, Quegg, captain of a old rusty minesweeper, now a resupply ship, the Caine, was masterfully painted as the unstable, eccentric villain throughout most of the book ... until his second in command mutinies and takes over the ship in a storm. He, court marshaled for this offense, is acquitted when Quegg breaks down while testifying. Then the author, Herman Wouk, turns things upside down by making Quegg into the demi-hero for doing his small part in the much bigger picture of the war in the Pacific. Although annoying, nothing that Quegg had done deserved the disloyalty of his holier-than-thou crew. In a blink of an eye, the villain in this book became the protagonist.

So Trump is clearly eccentric and makes enemies at the drop of a tweet. But he is doing the job that the American voters asked him to do ... despite all the obstacles thrown up by the Democrats, the elite media and the establishment Republicans ... a job much more difficult than need be. Instead of his enemies taking him down with a Caesar-like assassination ... for which this country wouldn't stand ... they are opting for another slow-motion coup ... in many ways much more sinister and morally repugnant ... much like the naive crew of the Caine.

Headlines

The following headlines are real. They all have been found Internet news sites. Guess which ones came from Politico?

Trump to tap Christopher Wray to head FBI

58 scientific papers declare 'global warming' a myth

China prepares for moon landing ...

Report: James Comey asked Jeff Sessions to not leave him alone with Donald Trump

SKorea suspends deployment of U.S. anti missile system ...

Czech Republic denies EU quota, refuses migrants

Ex-Intel chief Clapper: Watergate 'pales' in comparison to Russian probe

TV client sues celebrity attorney Gloria Allred for fraud, legal malpractice ...

Democrats take the first steps toward a Trump impeachment

ISIS claims dual attacks on Iran shrine and Parliament ...

Ethics office won't probe Trump's domestic emoluments issue

Evergreen State officials ask vigilantes to stop patrolling campus with baseball bats

Media Orchestrations

I could be fooling myself but it seems that, in the lead-up to former FBI Director James Comey's TV testimony tomorrow, both sides of this political symphony are pulling media strings to help their case. Trump just announced his choice for  his new FBI  Director, Christopher Wray ... and Obama's former intelligence chief, James Clapper, said in Australia yesterday that Watergate pales in comparison to the current Trump-Russia collusion probe (interestingly, in his recent Congressional testimony, Clapper said that there was no evidence of collusion in this matter).

Where will the truth eventually land in this ever-shifting kurfuffle? I certainly don't know ... or if we will ever know ... but it is becoming increasingly clear to me exactly how this political music is scored. And the fact that Clapper has pulled his u-turn at this late hour ... presumedly with no access to newer relevant information ... suggests to me that the Democrats may be hitting a sour note.

Lame Duck?

Sleepy Chuck Todd is calling Donald Trump a "lame duck" president and that he will be unable to react if a crisis erupts somewhere in the world. And Maxine Waters is daily calling for his impeachment. These rants are primarily based on Trump's tweet just about a month ago claiming that former President Obama was "wiretapping" him at Trump Tower. The media has been gleefully castigating Trump for this "outrageous" attack on our former president. As more and more evidence is leaking out to support Trump's charge, they are desperately trying to change the subject back to Russian intervention in last Fall's election.

But the tide is clearly turning. It is now becoming evident that there was NSA and possibly FBI surveillance on the Trump team for almost a year ... well before Trump even got the nomination ... and that the intercepts collected were disseminated in raw form, without the names of those intercepted masked out, to a very wide swath in the intelligence community. This later development was under the direct order of President Obama with the implicit understanding that much would be leaked to the media ... a felony carrying a punishment of up to 10 years in prison.

So who ordered the operatives in Trump team to be surveilled ... in itself a political scandal of gigantic proportions and one smacking of a police state? And then who ordered that these collected transcripts be unmasked? And finally who leaked them to the media? Well we may now have an answer to the second question ... Former National Security Adviser, Susan Rice (of the Benghazi big lie fame) ... see: Bloomberg Article. This looks like a devious three-step process to destroy Trump where each party at each step can (try to) claim clean hands. Sinisterly clever.

This revelation is but another indication that Obama's White House hoodlums had been moving well beyond what the American people would and should tolerate ... using the power of a sitting government to crush its political opponents. And it feels very much like Alexander Butterworth's opening of the can of worms in the Watergate investigation ... the revelation about the Oval Office taping system. Therefore the last serious question is, How involved in this was the then president? Clearly his executive order disseminating this intelligence does suggest his approval of this skulduggery.

So, Mr. Sleepy Todd, how lame is Trump looking now? And Ms. Maxine Waters, perhaps you might have to swing your impeachment cannon around to your former president? I know he is out of office, but his history is yet to be written. Perhaps we can impeach even a former president?

Changing the Game

I wrote earlier today about the secret society of lefty journalists called Gamechanger Salon (somewhat pretentious name, no? … see: Fletcher's Castoria Blog.) This has got me ruminating on what is occurring in news reporting in general. As I understand it, reporters are meant to provide their audience the essence … the who, what, when, where and how of a news story … preferably early on … but not necessarily the why. Now, often the lede of a news story is the imagined why and one has to sift through many filler paragraphs to find these other facts … if they are there at all. Too often reporters tend to squash other essential and needed facts for the sake of political correctness.

I recall reading a while back a survey done on the entering students at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism … and the primary motivation of these tyros was to change society for the better (obviously “better” being a relative term.) In other words, rather than reliably and truthfully reporting the facts of what was occurring in the world, they wanted to change the game. And it appears that Columbia University ... and many other such schools ... do little to change this misguided ambition. I believe that this is a noxious notion of what reporting is supposed to be … and has grown mainly from Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate news reporting which brought down President Nixon.

Every cub reporter now wants to emulate this dynamic duo … and lead our society out of the sewer and into his/her own version of utopia. Such scooping of the world will result in a Pulitzer Prize and then fame and riches beyond imagination. This is a little like a grandstanding playground basketball player imagining himself as the next LeBron James. Instead of pursuing a respectable career within ethical and professional boundaries, many reporters are now trying to become another Walter Cronkite and “making a difference” like this CBS News anchorman did by humiliating LBJ. And so they join the Gamechangers Salon.

Opinion journalists may do this ... but not reporters. There should be an enormous gulf between the two ... which has now been conveniently blurred. And, journalists of any stripe should not be forming cabals.

(I think that H.L. Mencken also said that any newsman who has more than just a handful of mourners at his funeral was not a good journalist.)

Gaps

One of the things that brought down the Nixon presidency was the critical 18.5 minute gap in the Oval-office tapes that was supposedly “accidently erased” by Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods.  Now we are experiencing a similar mysterious gap in the e-mail records surrounding the growing Benghazi scandal.  Yesterday the White House did a dump of 100 pages of e-mails that mostly dealt with the Susan Rice talking-points-fiction-creation process surrounding this terrorist attack in Libya (with critical names redacted).  However, this e-mail sequence also involves a critical gap … the 67 hours of such exchanges immediately following the Benghazi slaughter.  (See: Daily Caller Story).

There is a difference however … however much the FBI tried, it could not recover these 18.5 taped minutes of Nixon's Watergate comments … but it should be quite straightforward to discover these two days of the meaningful back-and-forth e-mails on Benghazi. 

My breath is baited.

Peeling the Onion

Last fall, White House spokesman and common streetwalker, Jay Carney, repeatedly avowed that neither the State Department nor the White House had anything to do with editing the Benghazi talking points that Susan Rice then used to lie to the American public … other than changing the term “consulate” to “diplomatic facility.”  It now appears that Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokesperson and Hillary Clinton rump-swab was involved in revising these talking points twelve separate times … resulting in the removal of all references to terrorists involvement in the attack and any before-the-fact CIA warnings about the growing peril to our diplomatic operations in Benghazi.  Please read the details here: ABC News Story.

Here are a few significant quotes from this story:

White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department.  The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?  Concerned …”

The significant edits – deleting references to al Qaeda and the CIA’s warnings – came after a White House meeting on the Saturday before Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday shows.  

Like with the Nixon Watergate investigation, this Benghazi onion is being daily peeled  … each new layer confirming a State Department and White House conspiracy to cover-up what was their shameful derelictions of duty in the murder of four Americans.  And like the Nixon scandal, this all seemed to revolve around political considerations running up to a Presidential election. But this time there is one difference …the Internet and social media could well cause the denuding of this Benghazi onion to proceed at a more rapid pace.

Afterward: To see an additional, albeit parallel slant on this subject, please read Powerline Blog.

Ham Sandwich

When the Watergate scandal was in full swing, I wore an American flag pin upside down on my jacket until Tricky Dick Nixon resigned. If I were still wearing suits, I would repeat this cry of distress today. As the Benghazi scandal continues to fester, it is becoming clearer exactly what occurred there … and it wasn’t pretty. A reader of the Powerline blog has assembled a detailed timeline of events there that helps to answer a lot of questions. Please take the time to read this fascinating hyperlink so that you too may start to connect the sordid dots: Powerline Blog Reference. One revelation in this post was that there was, despite direct orders to “stand down,” a small rescue mission sent to Libya which did reach Benghazi in time to affect things somewhat. Fascinating reading!

Now we learn that our Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta has relieved General Carter Ham, the leader of the U.S. Africa command, of his duties … see: Washington Times Story. One does not have to be a genius to understand that this was likely due to Ham’s sending of this and/or another proposed rescue mission. Now comes the interesting part. It seems clear that this rather drastic action on Panetta’s part indicates that this “stand down” order was from him … or, more likely, from President Obama. An order from below this level should not have engendered such drastic punishment to the general. Yes, General Ham was clearly wrong to disobey such an order … just as it was more egregiously wrong to issue it.

Back to the cover-up. The gang that killed Osama (and apparently helped cause four Americans in Benghazi to suffer the same fate), in the cold light of dawn, realized how this screw-up might affect the upcoming Presidential elections. So they clearly started covering their tracks … and grabbed the convenient excuse of the You-Tube anti Islamic video being the cause of the Benghazi “riots.” They peddled this concoction for almost three weeks and offered lame excuses about an on-going investigation as to why they couldn’t answer direct questions. Now that things are quickly unraveling, they are still hoping to make it to November 6th without the whole fetid mess being exposed. Nixon did avoid the more serious Watergate revelations until after his election. But given the speed of current news cycles on the Internet (the New York Times, Washington Post, etc. are doing their level best to ignore this story), I doubt if Obama will be quite so lucky. I sincerely hope not.



Afterward: A naval strike-force Admiral is also being replaced (see: ABCNewsStory).  Is this related?

It's a Barnum & Bailey World

Just as phony as it can be.  This is my assessment of the supposed "gaffs" that Mitt Romney made on his three nation foreign tour from which he just returned.  These malapropisms were all manufactured by a increasingly desperate left-wing press to tarnish what was a very successful trip for the presumptive Republican candidate for President.  According to these knee-jerkers, they were:

- In England, when specifically asked, Romney questioned just how prepared this country was for its summer Olympiad.  These were not harsh critiques, but just repetitions of headlines that had graced the London tabloids for days prior to his visit.

- In Israel, Romney noted that the economic progress that Israel has made since its independence was a reflection of its culture.  He did not specifically contrast this with the fiscal malaise that the Palestinian people are subjected to, but this didn't stop the main-stream media from jumping to this conclusion and attributing it to Romney.

- After a robust reception in Poland by its leaders and its adoring people, Romney was slimed by proxy when one of his aides brusquely asked screeching reporters to please respect the solemn nature of the site that was being visited (the Polish Tomb of the Unknown Soldier).

This clearly ushers in the silly season for the U.S. (and British) Fourth Estate ... and, given the direction of The Barry's sinking poll numbers (see: Rasmussen Poll), I suspect it will continue to get even more make-believe as our days shorten into the fall elections. 

Ever since the Watergate scandal, many of our nation's reporters have felt that it was their solemn duty to pick our Presidents ... and then guide the narrative so that their readers knew for whom to pull the voting-booth levers.  This time I do believe they will be foiled ... and saddened as their readership continues to dwindle.  (As it ceases publication, Newsweek's final cover story is that Romney is a wimp ... how indicative ... how sad.)